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H OW W OULD Y OU V OTE ? Should at least 20% of the earth's
land area be strictly protected from economic development?
Cast your vote online at http://biology.brookscole.com/miller11.
Guanacaste
Nigaragua
Caribbean Sea
Llanuras de
Tortuguero
Costa
Rica
Ecologists and conservation biologists disagree.
They view protected areas as islands of biodiversity
that help sustain all life and economies, and serve as
centers of future evolution. See Norman Myer's Guest
Essay on this topic on the website for this chapter.
Whenever possible, conservation biologists call
for using the buffer zone concept to design and manage
nature reserves. This means protecting an inner core of
a reserve by establishing two buffer zones in which
local people can extract resources sustainably, in ways
that do not harm the inner core. Doing so can enlist
local people as partners in protecting a reserve from
unsustainable uses. The United Nations has used this
principle in creating its global network of 425 bio-
sphere reserves in 95 countries (Figure 8-23).
La Amistad
Arenal
Bajo
Tempisque
Panama
Cordillera Volcanica Central
Pacifico Central
Peninsula Osa
Pacific Ocean
Figure 8-24 Solutions: Costa Rica has consolidated its parks
and reserves into eight megareserves designed to sustain
about 80% of the country's rich biodiversity.
Science Case Study: Costa Rica—A Global
Conservation Leader
Costa Rica has devoted a larger proportion of land to
conserving its significant biodiversity than any other
country.
Tropical forests once completely covered Costa Rica, a
Central American country that is smaller in area than
West Virginia and about one-tenth the size of France.
Between 1963 and 1983, politically powerful ranching
families cleared much of the country's forests to graze
cattle. They exported most of the beef produced to the
United States and western Europe.
Despite such widespread forest loss, tiny Costa
Rica is a superpower of biodiversity, with an estimated
500,000 plant and animal species. A single park in
Costa Rica is home to more bird species than all of
North America.
In the mid-1970s, the country established a system
of reserves and national parks that by 2004 included
about a quarter of its land—6% of it in reserves for in-
digenous peoples. Costa Rica now devotes a larger
proportion of land to biodiversity conservation than
does any other country!
The country's parks and reserves are consolidated
into eight megareserves designed to sustain about 80%
of Costa Rica's biodiversity (Figure 8-24). Each reserve
contains a protected inner core surrounded by two
buffer zones that local and indigenous people can use
for sustainable logging, food growing, cattle grazing,
hunting, fishing, and eco-tourism. Costa Rica's biodi-
versity conservation strategy has paid off. Today, the
country's largest source of income is its $1-billion-a-
year tourism business—almost two-thirds of it from
eco-tourists.
To reduce deforestation, the government has elim-
inated subsidies for converting forest to cattle grazing
land. It also pays landowners to maintain or restore
tree coverage. The goal is to make sustaining forests
profitable. The strategy has worked: Costa Rica has
gone from having one of the world's highest deforesta-
tion rates to one of the lowest.
Biosphere Reserve
Core area
Core area
Buffer zone 1
Buffer zone 1
Buffer zone 2
Buffer zone 2
Tourism and
education center
Human
settlements
Research
station
Figure 8-23 Solutions: a model biosphere reserve. Each re-
serve contains a protected inner core surrounded by two buffer
zones that local and indigenous people can use for sustainable
logging, food growing, cattle grazing, hunting, fishing, and eco-
tourism.
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